Just a few years ago, then-Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio said that if Donald Trump were reelected, he would advise the president to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.” Nearly four weeks into his new term, Trump appears to be executing that plan, attempting to fire or place on administrative leave thousands of federal employees perceived to be politically adverse to him, and reclassifying many more to make them fireable at will. Those hired in their stead will be vetted by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, thanks to a new executive order.

Last week, two sets of FBI employees filed the first lawsuits challenging these moves on First Amendment grounds. Both allege that the employees were targeted as a form of retaliation. The essence of a First Amendment retaliation claim is that although the government may deny someone a valuable benefit for any number of reasons, “there are some reasons upon which the government may not rely,” including, pointedly, someone’s “constitutionally protected speech or associations.” The plaintiffs in the FBI cases allege that the Trump administration is demanding a list of 6,000 agents involved in investigating the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases in order to possibly punish or purge thousands of agents Trump perceives (surely wrongly in many instances) to be politically opposed to him. The FBI employees should win their First Amendment claims, especially if any mass purge takes place.

[Tom Nichols: Trump and Musk are destroying the basics of a healthy democracy]

Zooming out, thousands of other federal employees could well make similar constitutional claims, because what the Trump administration is doing with the FBI appears to be but a small part of a much larger effort to resurrect a government-wide political-patronage system, something the First Amendment forbids.

From the founding until 1883, a “spoils”—as in, “to the victor belong the spoils”—system of political patronage took root and flourished in the federal government. New administrations would fire federal officials belonging to the other party and hire their own people. President Andrew Jackson became particularly associated with the spoils system after campaigning on rooting out corruption and firing nearly 10 percent of federal employees, replacing many with supporters upon taking office, but he was far from the only president to reward political cronies with federal jobs, as the University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw has explained.

Political-patronage systems promote corruption at the expense of effective governance, and Americans grew dissatisfied with the cronyism and moblike rule that flowed from the spoils system. Following decades of effort to enact civil-service reform, momentum surged when a disgruntled office-seeker assassinated President James Garfield in 1881. In response, Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883 to “regulate and improve the civil service of the United States,” establishing a merit-based system for federal hiring.

Under the current federal civil-service regime, fewer than 4,000 federal employees—including constitutional officers, such as the attorney general and secretary of state, and top agency officials—serve at the president’s pleasure, fireable for political disagreements or pretty much any other reason. The overwhelming majority of the more than 2 million workers who daily serve the American people in the federal civil service are wisely protected from political firings.

That protection flows from something even deeper than the Pendleton Act and other federal statutes. In 1947, the Supreme Court was faced with a First Amendment challenge to the Hatch Act, which limits the extent to which most federal officials can engage in overt political activity while in office. The Court upheld the act but made clear that the First Amendment would prohibit Congress from directly restricting the ability to hold federal offices to members of one party, such as by enacting “a regulation providing that no Republican … shall be appointed to federal office.” Notwithstanding the Court’s guidance, the worst practices of political patronage continued to crop up in state and local governments, forcing the Supreme Court to elaborate the point and put a stop to spoils practices in a series of cases.

The most relevant case to our present-day situation began in 1980, when Republican Illinois Governor Jim Thompson issued an executive order freezing all hiring across state agencies absent express permission from his office. Requests for exceptions became routine, and an agency was set up inside the governor’s office to vet them. Five job-seekers sued, claiming that in practice, the order and exceptions were being used to create a political-patronage system favoring Republicans.

[Annie Lowrey: Civil servants are not America’s enemies]

When the case reached the Supreme Court, the Court held that systems of political patronage like the one established by Thompson violate the First Amendment. Quoting one of its first patronage decisions, the Court reaffirmed that “conditioning public employment on the provision of support for the favored political party ‘unquestionably inhibits protected belief and association.’” Doing so “pressures employees to pledge political allegiance to a party with which they prefer not to associate, to work for the election of political candidates they do not support, and to contribute money to be used to further policies with which they do not agree.” It is “tantamount to coerced belief,” something the First Amendment plainly forbids. Nor did it matter that Thompson had not issued a direct order specifying that only Republicans would be hired, because “what the First Amendment precludes the government from commanding directly, it also precludes the government from accomplishing indirectly.”

There is an exception to the First Amendment bar on political hirings and firings. Those officials in legitimate policy making positions can be dismissed for political reasons without offending the Constitution. That’s because in America’s representative democracy, it is important that lawful policy reflects the political will of the voters, as voiced by the executive. But the executive cannot simply label large numbers of officials “policy makers” and render them all fireable at will. Instead, courts must look through labels to the substance of an official’s role and determine whether political alignment is necessary in that role. In any given dispute, the government has the burden of demonstrating that a particular position is in fact a policy-making one before the job-holder may be fired based on raw political allegiance.

The Trump administration seems set on flouting this precedent. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump and those around him signaled that the MAGA movement would expect total loyalty from federal officials. On Inauguration Day, after taking office, Trump suggested that “all” of the “Biden bureaucrats” should be fired. The same day, Trump signed one executive order to freeze much merit-based federal hiring, and he signed another that will help him consolidate political control over existing employees. The latter order conveniently expanded the number of officials to be classified as policy makers—from fewer than 4,000 to potentially hundreds of thousands. The administration also expanded the type of agency hiring authority that would make bringing in loyalists easier. And late last month, federal employees were informed by email that the majority of federal agencies are likely to downsize, and that loyalty will be a determining factor in deciding who stays.

Meanwhile, purges of employees whom Trump likely views as politically misaligned with him have begun to roll out across agencies. The administration has directed agencies to fire most probationary staff, nearly all of whom were hired during the Biden administration. Department of Education employees were reportedly put on leave for simply attending a DEI training in 2017. The FBI officials who sued say they have reason to believe that the Department of Justice is planning to engage in the mass unlawful firing of agents who had any involvement in certain investigations related to President Trump, including the January 6 cases, and the lawful search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. DOJ attorneys involved in the January 6 prosecutions were terminated because their work on those cases purportedly would prevent them from “faithfully” implementing Trump’s agenda. At the beginning of February, the administration moved to shut down USAID entirely. Although the administration explains the move as aimed at preventing waste and fraud, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said—without citing any evidence to support the improbable claim—that the Trump administration had determined that “98 percent of the [USAID] workforce either donated to Kamala Harris or another left-wing candidate,” and Elon Musk posted on X, “USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” As for replacing those fired, Trump signed a new executive order this week, directing that all future career-appointment hiring decisions be made in consultation with a team lead from Musk’s DOGE.

[Anne Applebaum: There’s a term for what Trump and Musk are doing]

Taken together, the administration’s actions bear a striking resemblance to the Illinois patronage scheme that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional: freeze hiring, purge perceived political opponents, and consolidate all hiring and staffing decisions in a body close to the executive.

The Trump administration clearly knows that the First Amendment prohibits resurrecting a government-wide political-patronage system. That Inauguration Day executive order expanding the number of purported policy makers claims that “employees in or applicants for Schedule Policy/Career positions are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration.” Similarly, the administration’s implementing guidance, issued at the end of January, in fact cites the Supreme Court’s anti-patronage decisions, specifying that “Patronage Remains Prohibited.”

But the administration’s actions and statements suggest that the resurrection of a political-patronage system is well under way. Particularly if political purges continue, courts must see the anti-patronage posturing as pretext and enforce the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court memorably put it in the Illinois case, “To the victor belong only those spoils that may be constitutionally obtained.”

One of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever pulled is to convince millions of people that DOGE, the self-styled Department of Government Efficiency, is about government efficiency.

DOGE isn’t really a department; it’s not an agency; it has no statutory authority; and it has little to do with saving money, streamlining the bureaucracy, or eliminating waste. It is a name that Trump is allowing a favored donor and ally to use in a reckless campaign against various targets in the federal government. The whole enterprise is an attack against civil servants and the very notion of apolitical expertise.

Trump allies make noises about expert failures—and yes, experts sometimes do fail. In particular, MAGA world continues to demonize what its constituents believe was the medical establishment’s attempt to curtail civil rights during the coronavirus pandemic. (Those are arguable charges; Trump himself presided over a wave of shutdowns in 2020.) None of these complaints explains why DOGE teams have been unleashed in places such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which is responsible for American spy satellites. Worse, Musk’s team accidentally posted sensitive information from NRO in what one intelligence official called a “significant breach” of security.

[Theodore Roosevelt: An object lesson in civil-service reform]

DOGE also blundered into dismissing hundreds of people from the National Nuclear Safety Administration, the agency within the Energy Department that is responsible for the stewardship of the nation’s nuclear-weapons stockpile. It’s one thing to be angry about having to wear a mask at Costco; it’s another to engage in the apparent indiscriminate firing of more than 300 people who keep watch over nuclear materials. (The agency backtracked on Friday and rescinded some of those terminations.)

Populists are generally wary of experts, especially those who work for the government, but Musk is no man of the people: He is the richest human being in the world, and he runs major companies that rely both on government-provided expertise and significant government subsidies. As my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote, “Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut”—a willful indifference that gives away the game.

Musk’s assault on expertise is coming from the same wellspring that has been driving much of the public’s irrational hostility toward experts for years. I have been studying “the death of expertise” for more than a decade, and I have written extensively about the phenomenon in which uninformed laypeople come to believe that they are smarter and more capable in almost any subject than experts. The death of expertise is really about the rise of two social ills: narcissism and resentment.

Self-absorption is common these days, but Musk embodies a particular brand of narcissism found among certain kinds of techno-plutocrats who assume that their wealth is evidence of competence in almost any field. After all, if you’ve made a zillion dollars inventing an app, how hard can anything else be? And although it is a truism at this point to observe that Trump is narcissistic, one thing that binds Trump and Musk and many others is their sense that their talent and inherent greatness have been dismissed by experts. Much like ordinary citizens who have “done their own research” and yet are furious that doctors won’t listen to them, Trump and Musk seem constantly angry that their wealth and power can gain them anything except respect.

You can see this resentment almost every time President Trump (and Co-President Musk) speak. No one is allowed to know more about anything than Trump. When pressed, Trump will defensively say things such as “I’ve read a lot on it,” an implausible claim from a man who is famously reluctant to read. Musk, for his part, commands a personal fortune so large that it dwarfs the GDP of many small countries, and he brags about having a top U.S. security clearance—but he bristles at any doubts about whether he is, in fact, the most accomplished player of the video game Diablo IV.

For Trump and his allies, this kind of resentment is tightly threaded into  practical and self-interested concerns: Apolitical experts in a democracy are a strong line of defense against politically motivated chicanery. Meanwhile, Musk and others believe that money should translate directly into power, and that their wealth should confer intellectual legitimacy. Such people chafe at the reality that getting their way still sometimes requires arguing with experts, and that opposing those experts requires knowledge. Their solution is not to listen or learn but to try to replace those troublesome pencil necks with pliable servants.

I’ve experienced this phenomenon firsthand: More than a year ago, Musk’s occasional sidekick David Sacks was so offended by an online disagreement with me about the Russia-Ukraine war that he publicly made a large donation to the GoFundMe page of a part-time professor in Canada whose views more closely aligned with his own. He did this in my name, as if that would help him gain the upper hand in an argument that required facts and expertise.

[Robert P. Beschel Jr.: Making government efficient again]

Another dynamic at play is that Trump, Musk, and many others treat “experts” and “elites” as functionally indistinguishable. This is a dishonest claim, but it is useful in mobilizing public sentiment against experts in the name of a mindless egalitarianism. It is also part of the overall ruse: The DOGE assault has nothing to do with merit or equality. Indeed, Musk’s attack on federal agencies, with one group of privileged and educated people trying to displace another, is the most intra-elite squabble Washington has seen in years.

A similar resentment may also drive the young volunteers who are waving Musk’s name in front of career government servants. Washington has always been full of disappointed strivers who feel they’ve been kept out of the game by snotty social and intellectual gatekeepers—and, as a former young striver in the capital, I can affirm that there’s some truth in that. Now they’re in charge and more than ready to become obnoxious new elitists themselves. (“Do I need to call Elon?” one young DOGE-nik reportedly snapped when a federal official had the temerity to deny him access to sensitive information.)

In the early 20th century, the Spanish writer José Ortega y Gasset warned that such resentment would eventually become the enemy of talent and ability. “The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different,” he wrote in 1930, “everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.” Trump and Musk not only feel this same impulse; they have harnessed it for their personal use.

Eventually, such attacks run out of steam when the costs begin to accumulate. No matter how many times Stalin told his scientists to plant wheat in the snow so that it could evolve to grow in the winter, the wheat (which had no political allegiances) died. Today, vaccine refusal might seem like a brave stand against white-jacketed overlords—until your children are stricken with measles or whooping cough.

Modern societies, as Americans are soon to learn, cannot function without experts in every field, especially the many thousands who work in public service. The first step in containing the damage is to see Trump’s and Musk’s goals for DOGE clearly: It is a project rooted in resentful arrogance, and its true objective is not better government, but destruction.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition.

The critics don’t always get it right. Some viewers are adamant that certain polarizing or panned shows deserve their flowers, while others think particular acclaimed series can be overindulged with praise. For those who enjoy bickering with a Rotten Tomatoes score, read on for our editors’ answers to the question: What is a TV show that the critics were wrong about?

Season 2 of Euphoria (streaming on Max)

Coming off the heels of Euphoria’s visually stunning and acclaimed first season, the ingredients were all there for a successful Season 2: the talent, the stylish costuming, Labrinth’s distinctive synth-loaded score, the sheer force of the show’s cultural influence. I cared about the characters and their arcs—a feeling only amplified by the gut-wrenching performances of Rue (played by Zendaya) and Jules (played by Hunter Schafer) in the two stand-alone episodes that aired after the first season’s finale. But as the episodes in Season 2 stacked up, I found myself wondering: Is this it?

My grievances largely stem from how the characters were treated. Some of them got plenty of spotlight (Cassie, I’d argue, got more than necessary), and some beloved characters, including Kat, were sidelined and thrown for a loop with plotlines that didn’t gel with their character development in the previous season. Fez and Lexi’s relationship was intriguing but ended up undercooked. Elliot’s easy interference between Rue and Jules bewildered me. I’ve heard the defenses from die-hard Euphoria fans—they’re teenagers; they’re supposed to be irrational and impulsive and emotional—but in the end, messy characters don’t justify sloppy storytelling.

— Stephanie Bai, associate newsletters editor

***

Season 3 of The Sex Lives of College Girls (streaming on Max)

The Sex Lives of College Girls, Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble’s HBO comedy about four roommates, is best described as a college show meant to appeal to Millennials. And sure, it’s far from realistic. Are anyone’s dorm rooms really that big? Has a college student ever worn as many tweed blazers as Leighton? And why does every single male student have washboard abs?

But once you give up on trying to find relatable depictions of college days, past or present, you can enjoy the genuinely sweet and funny portrayal of female friendship. Many viewers have rightly complained that Reneé Rapp’s absence from most of the recent third season left a noticeable hole, and the critical reception was lukewarm, too. But by the season finale, the chemistry between the new “fourth roommate,” Kacey (played by Gracie Lawrence), and the rest of the girls was perfect. I still think about the scene where they sit on the floor and tell the awkward tales of losing their virginity. It’s a reminder of the profound power of good jokes and good advice, especially when delivered by a friend.

— Isabel Fattal, senior newsletters editor

***

Caso Cerrado (streaming on Peacock)

Caso Cerrado has had a chokehold on four generations of my family, though by any critical standards, it’s not exactly a great show. The Spanish-language courtroom reality-TV series, based in Miami, aired for 18 years on Telemundo and was broadcast across Latin America. My devout Dominican grandmother allowed only nature documentaries and Caso Cerrado to be played on her TV; my great-grandmother perpetually had it on during her final years, like ambient noise.

Though wildly popular, Caso Cerrado often received unfavorable reviews—one Spanish newspaper called it the “most ridiculous … show on television”—and accusations that its storylines were fabricated abounded. But at its peak, more than 1 million viewers tuned in daily to watch the lawyer Ana María Polo settle family and legal disputes, wielding a mix of Judge Judy’s bluntness and Oprah’s empathetic listening. Scored by melodramatic telenovela music, the show offered vignettes of human conflict—families fighting, crying, reconciling—that were at once deliciously dramatic and thought-provoking. This mix proved hyper-bingeable for my family and many others, especially because the show provided a tidy ending for its heavy topics in a way that real life often can’t. When each episode wrapped up, Polo would smack her gavel and pronounce “Caso cerrado!” Case closed.

— Valerie Trapp, assistant editor

***

Battlestar Galactica (streaming on Prime Video)

The 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot has been heralded for years as a triumph of storytelling: In 2020, for example, The Guardian wrote that “everyone is aware that BSG is supposed to be some sort of 21st-century TV classic.” I expected to love it—I’m the target audience for edgy science fiction with a strong serving of political allegory, where characters have to make morally gray choices in order to serve bigger causes the best way they believe they can. But the intervening years have not been kind to this series, or to its women, whom the writing too frequently flattens into badasses who have credulity-straining romances with the men they work with. Paired with the heavy-handedness of its messaging, and the way the plot goes off the rails in later seasons … All I can say is thank goodness we’ll always have everything this show promised in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

— Emma Sarappo, senior associate editor

***

Seasons 3 and 4 of The Killing (streaming on Hulu)

When the temperature hovers stubbornly at freezing, and rain is ceaseless, what sustains me is a twisty murder mystery propelled by a pair of moody detectives with some damn good chemistry. Well-known recent prestige shows fit the bill (True Detective, Mare of Easttown), but I’ll point you instead to the overlooked third and fourth seasons of The Killing, which reboot the central murder plot so you can easily start midway through the series.

Contrary to many critics, I prefer the latter seasons, in which the haunted ex-detective Sarah Linden (played by Mireille Enos), trying to settle into a quiet life as a transit cop just outside of cold, rainy Seattle, is drawn back into a homicide investigation when her former partner gets involved with a new case that shares gory similarities with a previous case of hers. But wait—a man had already been convicted and sentenced to death row for that past crime. Now you have 16 episodes filled with doubt and personal obsessions to savor.

— Shan Wang, programming director

Here are four Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

How progressives froze the American dream Growing up Murdoch David Frum: Why the COVID deniers won The Tesla revolt

The Week Ahead

Season 3 of The White Lotus, a comedy-drama series set at the White Lotus resort in Thailand (premieres tonight on Max) The Monkey, a horror movie based on Stephen King’s short story about a cursed monkey toy (in theaters Friday) Lorne, a book by Susan Morrison about the Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration by Katie Martin

I’ve Never Seen Parents This Freaked Out About Vaccines

By Emily Oster

Today, the world of vaccine questions has totally changed—in my view, for the much worse. I’m not just referring to the spectacle of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s likely ascension to the top of the government’s health-care bureaucracy or of Republican senators questioning vaccine safety publicly. Something is also happening among parents. I’ve continued to write about parenting, and to talk with parents about vaccines. And those conversations over the past few years—and especially the past year—have completely changed.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

Can anything satisfy the guests of The White Lotus? The house where 28,000 records burned The game that shows we’re thinking about history all wrong “Dear James”: Should I leave my American partner? The paradox of music discovery, the Spotify way The unfunny man who believes in humor What Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show said

Catch Up on The Atlantic

Anne Applebaum: There’s a term for what Trump and Musk are doing. RFK Jr. won. Now what? Trump says the corrupt part out loud.

Photo Album

As the International Space Station passed over the United Kingdom, this photo captured the city lights below. (Don Pettit / NASA)

Don Pettit, a NASA astronaut, engineer, and photographer, recently returned to the International Space Station for his fourth mission. Take a look at his photos of city lights, auroras, airglow, and the stars of our surrounding galaxy.

Explore all of our newsletters.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

This Presidents’ Day, spend time with stories on what everyone gets wrong about Tulsi Gabbard, how invisible habits drive your life, America’s “marriage material” shortage, and more.

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Tulsi Gabbard

Other than raw ambition, only one through line is perceptible in a switchbacking political career.

By Elaine Godfrey

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.

By Timothy W. Ryback

Growing Up Murdoch

James Murdoch on mind games, sibling rivalry, and the war for the family media empire

By McKay Coppins

History Will Judge the Complicit

Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president? (From 2020)

By Anne Applebaum

Invisible Habits Are Driving Your Life

The science of habits reveals that they can be hidden to us and unresponsive to our desires.

By Shayla Love

America’s ‘Marriage Material’ Shortage

Adults are significantly less likely to be married or to live with a partner than they used to be.

By Derek Thompson

Five Books That Offer Readers Intellectual Exercise

Each of these titles exercises a different kind of reading muscle so that you can choose the one that will push you most.

By Ilana Masad

From the Archives

In 1895, the future 26th president of the United States offered a critique of the spoils system and argued in favor of a nonpartisan and rigorously vetted civil service. “The government cannot endure permanently if administered on a spoils basis,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “If this form of corruption is permitted and encouraged, other forms of corruption will inevitably follow in its train.”

Culture Break

Fabio Lovino / HBO

Watch. Can anything satisfy the guests of The White Lotus? In the new season (streaming now on Max), the rich tourists want more, and more, and more, Hannah Giorgis writes.

Read. Imani Perry’s latest book, Black in Blues, examines the intersections between the color blue and the Black experience.

Play our daily crossword.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

For decades, America’s young voters have been deeply—and famously—progressive. In 2008, a youthquake sent Barack Obama to the White House. In 2016, voters ages 18 to 29 broke for Hillary Clinton by 18 points. In 2020, they voted for Joe Biden by 24 points. In 2024, Donald Trump closed most of the gap, losing voters under 30 by a 51–47 margin. In one recent CBS poll, Americans under 30 weren’t just evenly split between the parties. They were even more pro-Trump than Boomers over 65.

Precisely polling teens and 20-somethings is a fraught business; some surveys suggest that Trump’s advantage among young people might already be fading. But young people’s apparent lurch right is not an American-only trend.

“Far-right parties are surging across Europe—and young voters are buying in,” the journalist Hanne Cokelaere wrote for Politico last year. In France, Germany, Finland, and beyond, young voters are swinging their support toward anti-establishment far-right parties “in numbers equal to and even exceeding older voters.” In Germany, a 2024 survey of 2,000 people showed that young people have adopted a relatively new “gloomy outlook” on the future. No surprise, then, that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland has become the most popular party among Germans under 30. Like most interesting phenomena, this one even has a German name: Rechtsruck, or rightward shift.

[Read: Why the COVID deniers won]

What’s driving this global Rechtsruck? It’s hard to say for sure. Maybe the entire world is casting a protest vote after several years of inflation. Last year was the largest wipeout for political incumbents in the developed world since the end of the Second World War. One level deeper, it wasn’t inflation on its own, but rather the combination of weak real economic growth and record immigration that tilled the soil for far-right upstarts, who can criticize progressive governments on both sides of the Atlantic for their failure to look out for their own citizens first.

There is another potential driver of the global right turn: the pandemic.

Pandemics might not initially seem to cash out in any particular political direction. After all, in the spring of 2020, one possible implication of the pandemic seemed to be that it would unite people behind a vision of collective sacrifice—or, at least, collective appreciation for health professionals, or for the effect of vaccines to reduce severe illness among adults. But political science suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific authorities. One cross-country analysis published by the Systemic Risk Center at the London School of Economics found that people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership. This loss of trust persists for years, even decades, in part because political ideology tends to solidify in a person’s 20s.

The paper certainly matches the survey evidence of young Americans. Young people who cast their first ballot in 2024 were “more jaded than ever about the state of American leadership,” according to the Harvard Political Review. A 2024 analysis of Americans under 30 found the “lowest levels of confidence in most public institutions since the survey began.” In the past decade alone, young Americans’ trust in the president has declined by 60 percent, while their trust in the Supreme Court, Wall Street, and Congress has declined by more than 30 percent.

Another way that COVID may have accelerated young people’s Rechtsruck in America and around the world was by dramatically reducing their physical-world socializing. That led, in turn, to large increases in social-media time that boys and girls spent alone. The Norwegian researcher Ruben B. Mathisen has written that “social media [creates] separate online spheres for men and women.” By trading gender-blended hangouts in basements and restaurants for gender-segregated online spaces, young men’s politics became more distinctly pro-male—and, more to the point, anti-feminist, according to Mathisen. Norwegian boys are more and more drawn to right-wing politics, a phenomenon “driven in large part by a new wave of politically potent anti-feminism,” he wrote. Although Mathisen focused on Nordic youth, he noted that his research built on a body of survey literature showing that “the ideological distance between young men and women has accelerated across several countries.”

[Read: The not-so-woke Generation Z]

These changes may not be durable. But many people’s political preferences solidify when they’re in their teens and 20s; so do other tastes and behaviors, such as musical preferences and even spending habits. Most famously, so-called Depression babies, who grew up in the 1930s, saved more as adults, and there is some evidence that corporate managers born in the ’30s were unusually disinclined to take on loans. Perhaps the 18-to-25-year-old cohort whose youths were thrown into upheaval by COVID will adopt a set of sociopolitical assumptions that form a new sort of ideology that doesn’t quite have a name yet. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has written, many emerging European populist parties now blend vaccine skepticism, “folk magic” mysticism, and deep anti-immigration sentiment. “Spiritual leaders are becoming political, and political actors have veered into the occult,” she wrote.

New ideologies are messy to describe and messier still to name. But in a few years, what we’ve grown accustomed to calling Generation Z may reveal itself to contain a subgroup: Generation C, COVID-affected and, for now, strikingly conservative. For this micro-generation of young people in the United States and throughout the West, social media has served as a crucible where several trends have fused together: declining trust in political and scientific authorities, anger about the excesses of feminism and social justice, and a preference for rightward politics.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

The single greatest success of Donald Trump’s second term so far might be his Cabinet. Today, senators confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, one day after confirming Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. The nomination of Kash Patel to lead the FBI is headed to a floor vote, and Linda McMahon—chosen to lead and apparently dismantle the Department of Education—is testifying to senators today.

Many parts of Trump’s agenda are deceptively fragile, as the journalist Ezra Klein recently argued. Courts have stepped in to block some of his executive orders and impede Elon Musk’s demolition of broad swaths of the federal government as we know it. Republicans in Congress still don’t seem to have a plan for moving the president’s legislative agenda forward. But despite clear concern from a variety of Republican senators about Trump’s Cabinet picks, it now seems possible that Trump will get every one confirmed except for Matt Gaetz—an indication of how completely Senate Republicans have surrendered their role as an independent check on the president.

The initial rollout of nominees was inauspicious. Gaetz, whom Trump reportedly chose spontaneously during a two-hour flight, lasted just eight days before withdrawing his nomination, after it became evident that Republicans would not confirm him. The rest of the slate was weak enough that at least one more casualty was likely, though I warned in November that a uniformly bad group might perversely make it harder for Republicans to take down any individual. How could they say no to one and justify saying yes to any of the others?

Pete Hegseth had no clear qualifications to run the Defense Department, serial infidelities, and allegations of a sexual assault and alcohol abuse. (He has denied both allegations, and settled with the sexual-assault accuser out of court. Prosecutors have said that they did not have sufficient evidence to pursue charges.) Gabbard not only lacked any intelligence experience but also brought a history of views antithetical to many Republican senators, an affinity for deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and evidence of dishonesty. Patel was, in the view of many of his former colleagues in the first Trump administration, simply dangerous. Kennedy was, um, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now all seem likely to take up their posts. Sure, it’s taken a while. Democrats have done what they can to slow down many of these nominations, and they voted unanimously against Hegseth, Kennedy, and Gabbard (a former Democratic House member!). Republicans objected when the administration tried to drive nominees through without FBI background checks, and damaging information about each of these nominees has continued to emerge; earlier this week, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin accused Patel of orchestrating a political purge at the FBI, despite promises not to do so. Yet none of that has mattered to the results.

Getting this done has required the White House to do some deft maneuvering. Trump allies publicly bullied Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who is a veteran and an outspoken advocate for victims of sexual assault, into backing Hegseth. According to The Wall Street Journal, they privately bullied the Republican Thom Tillis, a North Carolinian who has sometimes bucked Trump and faces a tough reelection campaign next year, after he indicated that he’d vote against Hegseth; he ultimately voted in favor. They horse-traded with Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana medical doctor who sounded very skeptical of Kennedy during hearings, giving him undisclosed reassurances in exchange for his support. As Politico reported, Trump dispatched J. D. Vance to absorb the grievances of Todd Young, an Indiana senator, about Gabbard; the vice president called off attacks from Trump allies and won Young’s vote.

One lone Republican voted against all three: Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the man responsible for keeping GOP senators lined up behind Trump during his first four years in office. The rest have various justifications for voting more or less in lockstep. They say they were reassured by what they heard in meetings—as though they’ve never seen a nominee fib, and as though that outweighed long histories. They say that presidents deserve to have the advisers they want. Behind closed doors, they might lay out a different calculation: Voting no on Cabinet members is a good way to tick Trump off while gaining little more than symbolism; better for them to keep their powder dry for real policy issues where they disagree with him.

These rationalizations might have made sense for a distasteful nominee here and there, but what Trump has put forward is likely the least qualified Cabinet in American history. In 2019, the Senate deep-sixed John Ratcliffe’s nomination as DNI (though it did confirm him a year later); this time around, when nominated for director of the CIA, he was seen as one of the more sober and qualified picks. Putting people like Trump’s nominees in charge of important parts of the federal government poses real dangers to the nation. Tom Nichols has explained how Hegseth exemplifies this: He seems more interested in bestowing trollish names on bases and giving contradictory messages about Ukraine than the tough work of running the Pentagon. That’s bad news in the immediate term and worse news when a crisis hits.

The idea of waiting to push back on Trump later might be more convincing if no one had ever seen him in action, as I discussed yesterday. Successfully ramming through this slate of nominees will only encourage the president. If Republican members wanted to, they could exert unusual leverage over the White House because of the narrow 53–47 margin in the chamber; Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin showed during the Biden presidency how a tiny fraction of the Democratic caucus could bend leadership to its will. But if Trump managed to get senators to vote for Gabbard and Kennedy, two fringe nominees with some far-left views, why should he expect them to restrain him on anything else?

The real reason for these votes is presumably fear. Republicans have seen Trump’s taste for retribution, and they fear his supporters in primaries. The irony is that in bowing to Trump, senators may actually be defying voters’ preferences. A CBS News poll published Monday found that six in 10 GOP voters would prefer to see congressional Republicans stand up to Trump when they disagree with him. By knocking down some of the worst nominees, senators might have made the Cabinet better and served the country well. But if that wasn’t enough to persuade them, perhaps the chance for political gain could.

Related:

Kash Patel will do anything for Trump. The perverse logic of Trump’s nomination circus (From November)

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Before it burned, Charlie Springer’s house contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, hundreds of signed musical posters, and about 100 gold records. The albums alone occupied an entire wall of shelves in the family room, and another in the garage. On his desk were a set of drumsticks from Nirvana and an old RCA microphone that Prince had given to him at a recording session for Prince. A neon Beach Boys sign—as far as he knows, one of only eight remaining in the world—hung above the dining table.

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Elon Musk is targeting federal agencies, slashing workforces, and crippling programs that support millions of people around the world. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic join to discuss how Musk and President Donald Trump are carrying out plans to purge thousands of employees from the federal government.

This week the Trump administration dismantled USAID, the world’s single largest humanitarian donor. “USAID has the thought leadership, the technical ability, to run aid programs at a large scale that nobody else has,” Anne Applebaum said last night. Removing the agency “means probably the collapse of food-aid programs across Africa, probably the collapse of aid to help refugees. USAID runs vaccination programs for children all over the world; it will mean children will not get polio vaccines.”

The takedown of USAID may also have an effect on the ongoing war in Ukraine, Applebaum explained. The agency has a role in restarting the Ukrainian energy grid, as well as in helping provide seeds and technology to Ukrainian farmers. “USAID thinks not only in terms of humanitarian aid, it also thinks more broadly about economics,” she continued. “Ukraine plays a big role in world food production; they want Ukrainian farmers to be back working.”

With Musk leading the takedown of USAID, “it’s a test case for ‘Can agencies just be abolished without Congress having any say?’ but it’s also a test case in cruelty,” Applebaum said. “Are Americans willing to accept a high level of cruelty and death just on the president’s whim?”

Meanwhile, pushback among Democrats has been limited. “Democratic strategists are warning [the party] not to make this their issue because Democrats have to be saying ‘We’re making your lives better, voters,’” Michael Scherer said last night. “If they’re seen as the party of defending a bureaucracy both [that] people don’t know about [and] that helps people very far away, they’re way off their message of eggs and butter.”

Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic; Eugene Daniels, the chief Playbook and White House correspondent for Politico; Asma Khalid, a White House correspondent at NPR and a political contributor for ABC News; and Michael Scherer, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Watch the full episode here.